– Analog medium & large format photography weblog –

Epson

I suppose some of the reasons that motivated me to do analog instead of digital photography was the organic feel to film and the specific look (I expected) you’d get, that there would be less post processing (boy was I wrong), and that I didn’t have to look through hundreds of pictures shot at random with my digital camera to find whatever I was going for. I’ve shot several rolls of the above mentioned films but never really taken the time to compare them side by side. Which is what you will need to do to figure out which one you prefer – if any.

Do not worry. Im not gonna go all sentimental on what a gift children is – as I am sure people who have kids are aware of that, and people that don’t are fed up of that kind of talk. However, my son just turned two, and shortly before his birthday I shot the above photo with my 8×10″ view camera on a 210mm lens and bellows fully stretched.

I am aware of that these buildings, the Oslo Barcode, have been photographed a lot already. But I wanted to give it ago too. This first above is one of the first I took with my large format camera. It is shot on Ektar. It was early evening and it might be a bit underexposed. Nevertheless, considering my experience at the time I’m quite happy with it.

This picture of my then one-year-old boy was among the first sheets I shot. It is not that easy using an 8×10″ large format camera to take a picture of a kid, and it requires a bit of preparing. I sat up the tripod and camera first, getting the light and background that I wanted. My wife then held him over her shoulder in front of the camera so I could focus. I made sure she knew how she was standing and how he was resting over her shoulder. I also made a mark where she was standing so she could stand at the exact same spot. When I had the composition I wanted, I loaded the camera with film. I then measured the light and that’s when it started to get tricky.

This is Jylland. The Danish west coast. You don’t see too much of the scenery in the photos, but it’s a fantastic coastal landscape. It’s very different from my native Norwegian coast but I still feel a sense of familiarity and ease there. The first photo is analog and shot with my Hasselblad 500C/M on FujiPro 400 pushed one stop, while the three others were shot digitally the next day with my Canon 6D. And to me these photos represents what separates analog photography from digital photography.